
More than 150 pastors, church leaders and directors of missions attended the recent Revitalization Conference, presented by the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, at Victory Baptist Church in Mount Juliet. The two-day event featured teaching seminars, worship music, designated fellowship times and multiple Q-and-A sessions. — Photos by David Dawson
MOUNT JULIET — Some pastors and church leaders tend to shudder, or perhaps even bristle, when they hear the word “revitalization.”
Phil Young, Larry Murphy and Phil Taylor — along with others on the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board’s Revitalization Team — are working hard to change that.
“We want people to understand that church revitalization is not about declining or dying churches,” said Young. “It’s about moving toward a sustainable, healthy lifestyle for the future.”
With hopes of helping churches learn more effective ways to do that, the TBMB recently hosted a Revitalization Conference at Victory Baptist Church in Mount Juliet.
The two-day event, held Feb. 22-23, featured Bill Elliff, renowned author and founding pastor of the Summit Church in North Little Rock, Ark., and Jeff Iorg, president of Gateway Seminary in Ontario, Calif., as the keynote speakers. The conference also included music led by Austin Clark, worship leader at First Baptist Church, Seymour.
The event drew 155 attendees — including pastors, church leaders and directors of missions — from churches of all sizes in Tennessee.
Murphy said he was excited about the turnout, and even more excited about the information that was available to the attendees.

Bill Elliff, author of several books and the founding pastor of Summit Church in North Little Rock, Ark, speaks on the importance and the impact of prayer.
“It’s so great to see a group of pastors, DOMs and staff leaders who are really desiring to see the Lord work in their church and to move forward with what God wants them to do,” Murphy said.
This year’s conference marked the relaunch of the event.
“For those of us who work for the Church Revitalization team, this is the first conference like this in several years because of COVID and some other factors,” Murphy said. “So, to come back and have the conference start up again, and to see this kind of attendance, it was awesome. And beyond just the attendance, it was so encouraging to see these guys be engaged and involved in everything that was going on.”
The first day of the conference included a four-part seminar led by Elliff, who spoke on the topic of “developing a culture of prayer.” He encouraged pastors and leaders to always be sensitive to what God is doing at their church, and to make sure not to quench the Holy Spirit when potential revival is taking place. He cited several examples in which he has seen that happen — including some experiences from his own ministry — and he spoke about how those missed opportunities have grieved him.
Elliff’s focal points during the seminar included examining the concept of “entering His presence in prayer” and discussing “what a presence-centered church” looks like. He also answered the question “why should we pray?” and talked about the “enemy we face” in regard to church leaders.

Jeff Iorg, president of Gateway Seminary in Ontario, Calif., talks to attendees on the topic of developing disciple-making strategies as well as how to develop mission strategies.
The second-day featured a three-part session led by Iorg. The seminary president spoke on developing evangelism strategies. He talked about the priority of evangelism — examining the innovated means in which the church at Antioch was able to advance the gospel — and also looked at different ways to develop disciple-making strategies as well as how to develop mission strategies.
In an interview with the Baptist and Reflector immediately following the conclusion of the conference, Iorg said he hoped the event was a morale booster for attendees.
“I hope pastors are encouraged by what they learned from the Word of God and by the example of other leaders to stay with the difficult challenge of revitalizing churches,” Iorg said. “It can be so discouraging — the daily grind of it all — and conferences like this can bring a new wave of encouragement as the Word of God and the Holy Spirit motivates (the church leaders) to go forward.”
Iorg said the conference energized him personally.
“It’s exciting to be around pastors who have devoted their lives to something so important,” he said. “Pastors are the most important leaders because they are leading the church — and the church is the conclusion of all God is doing in the universe.”
Each day of the conference concluded with a “roundtable discussion” during which each of the keynote speakers answered questions that had been texted to a “question hotline” during the conference. The event also included a dessert fellowship on Thursday night, along with other time slots that enabled the pastors and church leaders to bond with one another.
Murphy said he believes the conference helped pastors and church leaders gain a new perspective on the concept of revitalization.
“Our goal was to help our pastors realize that church ‘health’ is what we are looking at,” said Murphy. “We want all of our churches to be healthy — and that can mean different things for each individual church.
“We want them to understand that it all begins with the presence of God,” he added. “It’s also a matter of constant prayer. And once you’ve come to fully understand those two things, now you can start asking yourself, ‘what do we need to do as a church to start making some of these changes and transitions to move our church forward?’ And here again, this is something for each individual church to examine. It’s not about what some other church is doing.”
Young said he was encouraged by the conference, and he hopes attendees were, too.
“We all the read the statistics about how people are leaving the church and how churches are declining and dying,” Young said.
“So, to see a room full of pastors who are committed to doing what they can to be spiritually healthy themselves and thereby help their churches be healthy — that’s what it is going to take to meet our goal of reaching lost people with the gospel, maturing them in the faith and then helping them be on ministry and mission.”
Young said the road to revitalization is not always a smooth one, but it is well worth the effort for the churches who are willing to stay the course.
“For some churches, it might mean dealing with some setbacks and some things that don’t go as well as you hoped,” he said. “You might even experience some periods of time that aren’t as effective and productive as all of us hope they’d be.
“But we know the principles from Scripture, and we know the One who is walking with us through the journey,” said Young. “We know that He wants to see His bride be healthy. Even though we might have those setbacks along the way, it’s all about knowing that we are on the journey toward having sustainable church health. And that is what we want to see.” B&R


